G'harne Fragments

Description

A slim, unadorned, pasteboard-bound work in medium sixteenmo; 4 ½” wide by 5 ¾” high; 128 pages. The title is printed on both the pasteboard cover (a pale cream, with black ink) and the spine, with the author’s name (Sir Amery Wendy-Smith) printed below the title. No publisher is listed nor is a date of publication given. The production quality and style suggests a small university press or that the author paid for publication himself; the finished product is of inexpensive materials. There are numerous illustrations depicting some sort of cipher or artificial language consisting of haphazardly arranged dots and a scattering of astronomical charts. A handwritten dedication on the title page says “Many thanks for your advice and aid, W-S.”

Text

The third body is the greatest of the home sites in this region of all things, bearing much of worth to our people and in great settlements we inhabit it, sharing much of the southern lands though at time we made war with those we found there or who came after our arrival. The Nath Spheres proved of great worth after the coming of the [untranslatable] and his offspring, laying low his lands and driving them beneath the greatest of waters. Those who built upon the outer worlds pay us great heed and do not long stay upon this our claim and other native animals pay heed.

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In distant ages this attack would have been stopped by the power we control but after the rising of the enslaved ones we were greatly diminished. The great rock worms, lead by [untranslatable, but according to local tribes the leader of the “rock worms” is the being called Shudde M’ell(he who shakes the earth from below)] fears not our tools and trapped the few who remained within the interior of the city. By plan, these unworthy beings were drawn into the great chambers beneath and were trapped by means of the [?] sign, the shape of which carries potent strength. In this way we have bound him and his children here, until such a time that our people are revitalized and can return the amorphous ones into bondage and return to punish those who sought to overthrow our dominion.

— — — — —

The local mganga who collect the star-stones do say that for a time the site of G’harne was inhabited by a degenerate race of men who came from a distant land. They made sacrifices to the great worms dwelling there and lived in great filth and corruption. They awaited a time when their god, who they called the King of Night, would come from the land of the great water, after being freed from his tomb of stone topped by stones, and lead them back to rule there forever. These terrible men, said not to be of any tribe, lived there for many ages until they were gathered by two princes, one from the north and one from the east, who carried them forth for reasons unknown, perhaps as slaves. This god, the King of the Night (sometimes called the Black King or Lord), is also known as the God of the Bloody Tongue, the God of the Black Wind (by tribes in the Kenya Colony), the Spiraling Worm (in the Belgian Congo), Ndura Oteba, the Sender of Great Illness (Somaliland and Abyssinia). My research indicates that it is a common figure in many African mythologies and seems to show a remarkable diffusion of an obscure Egyptian divinity called ‘Nyarlathotep’.

Notes

Extremely rare volume.

Curtis Blakely notes "G'harne" is similar to the Arabic word "Al Ghariyun," which translates to "Those of the Cave."

After 2 weeks of study with one of the monk-librarians at Sacra di San Michele, Mary Elise St. Dennis learns this fragmentary work presents translation of inscribed tablets and stones found in the hither unknown city of G'harne located somewhere in Africa. An introduction to the fragments was written by Sir Amery Wendy-Smith and the fragments themselves describe the history of G'harne, a city built by an alien fungus-based race. These alien fungoids may have a home planet located beyond Neptune, but these particular invaders came from a planet between Earth and Mars that was destroyed in a great calamity. After the destruction, they came to earth and built a great civilization including the colony city of G'harne in Africa. The fragments go on to describe the collapse of the city after an invasion by malevolent subterranean rock worms. The survivors of the attack abandon the city and move back to their capital on the "southern land mass". The last part of the book is musings on the fragments, also by Wendy-Smith; these musings include him drawing a link between the Egyptian god Nyarlathotep and the God of the Bloody Tongue.

Experiences with Ancient Text

Mary Elise St. Dennis spends 2 weeks of study on this book with one of the monk-librarians at Sacra di San Michele.

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